WestWorld: ...Where nothing can possibly go worng!

Fair enough. I'm more offended by the action movie cliche of useless disposable security/"cavalry" stormtroopers that are there to just pathetically die at the hands of hosts no matter what. There's no tension during their scenes because as soon as you see them you know they'll find a way to die ASAP.

Yeah, the security guys "hup hup hup"ing around is the worst part of this show. wtf was with the light-up vests that tell them when someone is sneaking up on them? It's not just that the scenes are kind of narratively pointless like Evan says, but they're also shot just like 80's low-budget scifi action movies, complete with all the cliches. You see the goon shooting his gun from an elevated catwalk and you know he's going to be clutching his chest and diving over that railing any second.

They're too reminiscent of the kinds of movies that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was parodying, basically!

tessa thompson is a bad actress.

totally wrong, but she's a weird fit for this role. seems like her role should probably be played by an older actress.

anyway, this is by far the best episode in the history of the show, and definitely the only one that ever made me feel anything beyond "this is cool"

"this" meaning last week's McLarnon showcase, which I just watched

Whelp

back to your regularly scheduled crap westworld

Both of those deaths were so stupid. Like, get a fucking move on, there’s no suspense here, take the shot (and then the obvious, even dumber reaction shot, for bonus eyeroll)

I’m rooting for an episode that’s just Elsie & Charlotte timelines. That’s where I’m at.

Caught up on the last couple of weeks last night. Ghost Nation ep is one of the best television episodes I've seen in a while. At least up until the point when I realized that a piano arrangement of 'Heart-Shaped Box' was playing on the soundtrack, which ripped me right out of the moment. WTF @ the musical choices this season.

I assume the climax of the season finale will be set to a children's choir singing 'Lightning Crashes'.

player piano doing "wake me up when september ends"

Jug band version of 'All-Star'.

they've always had the player piano playing things like this. Black Hole Sun, some radiohead song.

yes, and now we’re making fun of it

Here we go

Whew

lame

I kinda drifted off this after the 4th or 5th episode, it just got kind of dull and meandery. Was it worth carrying on?

(Of the second season, that is.)

y'know, one of the most important parts of running the long game of multiple timelines is making sure everything comes together at the end, and I'm not sure they got that note

Everybody is aware that there is a post credits scene aren't they? NOt sure if that answers anything but does seem to add another layer.

the incredibly ambiguous mid-credits scene was entertaining but very much of the "oh, our mind-twisting plot seems to be tidied up -- check THIS shit out"

I stopped at the end of s1 and I'm feeling good about that decision. My sense is that this needlessly complex style of storytelling seems to be there to a) produce empty "aha" twists and b) obscure the fact that the story, themes and characters aren't actually all that interesting for the most part

I like seeing the movie-style wild west robots shoot stuff

When the system-admin-Logan(??) was giving them a tour of the overly elaborate digital facility/library(??) that was only there to represent(??) what the forge software was doing (right???). I suddenly felt like I was watching Matrix Revolutions and I was filled with dread during that whole sequence.

that is exactly what it was, yes. they were completely inside the computer at the forge

the virtual world the hosts were being uploaded to was also running there, although it's now been offloaded to somewhere else (tbd). which was confusing with all the "you lost them all" talk, needlessly complex that they kept making points like that and then immediately rolling them back because they were trying to fake the Delos people out, or they were trying to emphasize Bernard didn't really know what he did

all of the actual underlying plot points were fine, imo, if a little rote. the execution was sloppy

I have mixed feelings on the quick transition from "Dolores has a different body now" to "we've got a couple Dolores instances running around and they're irl" at the end

I thanked the narrative police for having that brief moment where the humans that were present were asking "wtf are they talking about when they say there's a door?!" because if there was a visible crack in the sky that actually existed this would have gone from semi-firm science fiction to whoopsy-daisy

It seemed like a sloppy compromise between what the story writers wanted vs. Evan Rachel Wood's contract.

xp

So what was the "Logan" then? Just an avatar for the tour guide? The virtual tour of the forge is obviously to accommodate the audience because that's certainly better TV then looking at lines of code over Delores's shoulder, but in the universe of the show it's pretty silly and excessive to have that as the interface of the secretive forge testing and archival process. The book thing especially.

Logan was the system itself having an avatar, although it was obviously responsible for everything they saw there

the hosts were designed to work in a human-viewpoint world and it was their natural way of interacting so I don't know why they'd be presented with something completely foreign. the book thing was a little heavy-handed but was so much "do you see!" after you realize it's the same notation that was scrolling through the player piano in the opening sequence

I stopped at the end of s1 and I'm feeling good about that decision. My sense is that this needlessly complex style of storytelling seems to be there to a) produce empty "aha" twists and b) obscure the fact that the story, themes and characters aren't actually all that interesting for the most part

I think the story, themes and characters are interesting, which is why the fact that they've gone so far down the rabbit hole to be even more frustrating. the two focused episodes (samuri, ghost nation) in season 2 were imo the best episodes of the series so far. if they had decided to do the whole season in a similar manner it would have been great.

you guys must really like reading subtitles

hey man, I did my best to stick to criticisms of the broad strokes of the plot and avoid any nitpicking, which I think is a lost cause in a Nolan family adventure. I'm willing to accept this sucker for what it is, a high concept romp with some sense of mystery imparted by fragmenting a script and editing the show accordingly. if I can't poke at it a little without being stereotyped as some poring-over-subtitles obsessive then why do we even talk about it

the forge library reminded me (excessively) of Doctor Who and that episode with River Song

I thought this was alright. certainly better than some of the press is claiming it was. I liked the house they were in at the end. Missed the mid and end credits so I guess I'll go back and watch those.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Millard House

it's not a dream...it's a FUCKING NIGHTMARE

i lol'd

ah, nice to know that was a real house and also nice to know that my taste is confirmed as good

I liked this finale. It sucks that Hale played such a big role because Tessa Thompson is a fucking awful actor.

is she? I see people say that (maybe in the annihilation thread...maybe it was you though). I think she's alright. She was good in Thor and Creed. It's not easy to credibily pull of the absurd dialog of westworld.

I wonder if they even told her 'ps you're dolores in this scene'

yeah she's good and the writing for her character is terrible, we've been over this.

Maybe you have, but I don't agree. Every character gets their share of awful dialogue in this show, but most of them manage to sell it.

I guess if Tessa looked more like a Mark Zucker-bot 3000 we wouldn't have to hear about how 'unrealistic' her character is. People have displayed a tendency to criticize her acting when what they're really annoyed by is the casting in combination with the rote as hell dialogue. She's treated like a 'diversity hire' because she's not older or white. Sidse (Theresa) was another woman in charge who wasn't given much better material and didn't give an award worthy performance either, but gets none of the crit Tessa gets. Maybe it's because Charlotte was deemed too perfect by some viewers to be realistic. Too young, too confident, too beautiful, too intelligent to be running things. And how dare she not have a moral compass that doesn't point north?! I also liked Kate on LOST for similar reasons, but it's interesting to see that people still have an issue with these types of characters.

wow, i hope i haven't been thinking of her as a 'diversity hire'. The cast's pretty diverse, and all the other major characters are well acted.

She's also terrible in Dear White People. But she's great in Thor, where she just needs to blow things up and not emote. Good casting. She seems fine in limited roles.

She's not great but she's better than Evan Rachel Wood in Wyatt mode

She's been fine-to-good in plenty of things (VMars, Creed)

Literally the only thing I have a problem with regarding Tessa is the age thing. Her character seems to be written as if she's been at the company for 20+ years or something. She just seems too young.

Didn't even realize it was the same actress as Thor! That was a very good role

xp yeah, she's totally wrong for the role for a bunch of reasons that aren't totally her fault. she might be better as new-Dolores, or whatever the fuck is going on.

what's up cousin slappy, "elsie" really sucked too